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Clinton impeachment whistle-blower Linda Tripp dies at 70

Linda Tripp, credited as a whistle-blower in the 1998 impeachment of former President Bill Clinton for sharing recordings of her conversations with Monica Lewinsky, died at the age of 70. File Photo by Robert Visser/UPI
Linda Tripp, credited as a whistle-blower in the 1998 impeachment of former President Bill Clinton for sharing recordings of her conversations with Monica Lewinsky, died at the age of 70. File Photo by Robert Visser/UPI | License Photo

April 8 (UPI) -- Linda Tripp who was credited with helping to expose former President Bill Clinton's affair with Monica Lewinsky died Wednesday at the age of 70, her family said.

Linda Tripp's son, Ryan Tripp, confirmed her death. Though her cause of death was not immediately available she had been treated for breast cancer in the past, The Washington Post reported.

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Her son-in-law, Thomas Foley, told the New York Post her death was not related to the global COVID-19 pandemic.

Linda Tripp worked as a White House secretary during the administration of President George H.W. Bush and worked in the Clinton administration in 1993 and 1994.

She later transferred to the Pentagon where she befriended Lewinski, who shared that she had a sexual relationship with Clinton while she was a White House intern.

Tripp presented recordings of conversations between Lewinsky and herself to independent counsel Kenneth Starr. She also told Starr about a dress stained with Clinton's semen that Lewinski wore during a sexual encounter with the president.

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Starr, who had been investigating potential wrongdoing by then-first lady Hillary Clinton related to the Whitewater real estate firm in Arkansas, then shifted his focus to the president. Tripp's evidence served as a basis for perjury charges against the president for denying the affair.

Clinton was charged with obstruction of justice and lying under oath, was impeached by the House in December 1998 and ultimately acquitted by the Senate in February 1999.

Notable deaths of 2020

Richard Thornburgh
Richard "Dick" Thornburgh, former attorney general of the United States and former governor of Pennsylvania, takes a seat at the witness hearing after U.S. Chief Justice nominee Judge John Roberts testimony before the Senate Judiciary Committee on Capitol Hill in Washington, D.C., on September 15, 2005. Thornburgh died on December 31 at age 88. Photo by Yuri Gripas/UPI | License Photo

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